Does anyone know if soffits can be added after drywall, to conceal exposed pipes/HVAC? That is, do I need to remove the drywall on the wall, before mounting a soffit to it?

Yeah, the workshop has some new vent pipes running across a wall, near the ceiling. Thank you, tankless water heater and new efficient HVAC system.

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Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. -Buddha

Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe. -Fishbone

Generally you dry wall the room to be as tight as possible and then add the soffits.

Thanks!

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Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. -Buddha

Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe. -Fishbone

Holy scheisse! That's awesome, John. I have to come check that out soon!

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Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. -Buddha

Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe. -Fishbone

Thanks guys, keep the soffit pics coming. I've designed a couple of mockups. I used 2X2's (difficult to find straight) for my mocks. I will be installing it over finished drywall. They will be housing pot lights, black lights (for cloudy sky/ glow in the dark star mural) and rope lights. I will post some pics as soon as I can.

@Brad Horstkotte- My mockups are based off of your soffit. Although I have 9ft ceilings so the soffit will be dropped more than yours. About 12in from the ceiling and about 16in from the wall. I will also use crown moulding around the edge.

The soffits are looking great guys, its nice to come to one thread (Show me your...) for what your looking for.

Forum mods, please post this in the correct "Sticky" for quick refference.

I used 2X2's (difficult to find straight) for my mocks. I will be installing it over finished drywall.

I added mine after all the drywall in the room was in as well. I used 2x3s, easier to find straight ones compared to 2x2s, and cheaper and lighter than 2x4s (and I don't have a table saw to rip 2x4s in half).

Quote:

Originally Posted by xzener

@Brad Horstkotte- My mockups are based off of your soffit. Although I have 9ft ceilings so the soffit will be dropped more than yours. About 12in from the ceiling and about 16in from the wall. I will also use crown moulding around the edge.

Thanks, I'm flattered. My ceilings are actually 9' as well - 9'4" before the flooring is in I think. Go figure, a garage with 9' ceilings, lol - and of course in the house, they're all 8'.

Mine measure 8.5" high (drop), and 28" wide - low and wide. The extra width allowed me to get good coverage from the lights, while still mounting them on the inside of the soffit (not the tray side); and let me hit parallel studs on the ceiling on both sides, which simplified the framing.

I was also going to use crown molding on the edges, but doing so on the curved face would be tricky - would have to get a flexible molding custom made, not outrageously expensive, but just one extra step, and I ended up liking the square lines. May still add crown on the wall/soffit junction, not sure yet.

My old soffits aren't much, but I did get this nice graphic from Sandman (SmX), of his soffit design and how to use a soffit as bass trap:

Twist my arm, here a few pics of my soffit. Just your basic crown + rope light. I used an extra trim piece below the crown, my intent before I had to rush to sell was to use the soffit as a bass trap, and to put fabric up as the bottom of the soffit. The second piece of trim would then be used to cover the staples (my carpenters put up the crown). To do so we attached the crown to 1x1 to space it out from the wall a bit. This pic shows the two pieces before we glazed the bottom piece.

I was also pretty pleased with the front marquee, although there are better ones on this board.

Thanks for all the posts and ideas guys, it really helped me design something that will work, and look great. I'm going to finish it off with 1/4 inch sheet rock, keeping it as light as possible. This soffit will house rope lights, black lights and pot lights.

New thread merged with the existing thread. The best way to seach is use advance search, title search only option and limit search words to one or two. In this case, I used "soffit" as the search word. There are quite a few other threads on soffits that maybe of interest to you too.